Labor Day

This year for Labor Day we spent a good share of the day just catching up with life and trying to finish getting settled into our apartment here in California. We finally got all the pictures up and finished putting everything away. It is nice to be rid of all the boxes! :) We also took part of the day to go to the Ocean. We had fun building a sand castle with a mote and letting the cold waves run over our feet. It is so relaxing to just sit and listen to the waves crash. Brooklyn enjoyed it too and she pretty much just slept the whole time in her car seat! It was a little colder than normal because it rained a little (you can see the gray skies). But even still it wasn't bad and we enjoyed our trip to the beach. It is so nice to live so close to the ocean that we can have fun at the beach AND get some work done.. all in one day! I have a feeling our car is going to constantly have sand in it with as many trips as we may be taking to the beach. :)

Zaya and Dad at the beach

He had fun playing with this little stick he found. 

Gray sand and gray skies

Beautiful waves

Gorgeous cliffs and palm trees

Building the sand castle. Brooklyn sleeping in the background.

Making good use out of the stick he found. :)

Brooklyn Update

Brooklyn turned 6 weeks old yesterday! She is getting so big and I mean BIG! She is such a cute little chunk! She already weighs over 10 lbs when I took her in on the 1st to get her hips looked at! I think it was 10 lbs 2 oz. Isaiah was never chunky and it is fun seeing her cute little chub rolls!
She has been such a good natured little baby and I think this is the only reason I have survived all the craziness that has been going on in our lives the past few weeks. She rarely cries and if she does it is because she is needing to eat usually. Otherwise she may fuss a little and that is because she has a gas bubble or needs a diaper change, or just wants her binkie or something.
She has such a sweet little spirit and she has brought so much joy and happiness to our lives already! I love seeing her smile which she is doing more and more of every day! When I may be having a hard day or something and I just need a little cheering up all I have to do is hold her and talk to her a little and she will smile at me and all my cares go away and I feel happy again. It really is like magic.
Her hair is also falling out. It was so crazy on I think the 17th of Augaust (so she was not quite a month old) is when I noticed her hair was starting to fall out a little, so I started rubbing my hand over her head and handfulls of her soft fuzzy hair just started to fall out! It was kind of crazy. It all fell out in like two days just tons at once! Hopefully that is normal. The back hair still hasn't fallen out so she kind of looks like she has a skullet but we still think she is cute anyway and hopefully her hair will either finish falling out or hurry up and grow back in so it doesn't look too silly for too long. Her hair already seems to be coming back in a little so I am hoping she won't be bald for as long as Isaiah was when he was tiny. :)
I am not sure what color her hair or eyes are going to be for sure yet, but just from my observations and my best guess, I think her hair is going to stay dark and her eyes will be blue, but that is just my guess. That could be completely wrong, or even if it isn't it could change. Who knows? I just think it is fun to guess.
She usually eats every 2-3 hours and at night she almost always goes at least 5-6 hours now (which she has been doing for a few weeks now!) It makes such a big difference!
She usually only poops once or twice a day, which is so opposite of what Isaiah did! I am starting to wonder if that is why she is getting so fat! Maybe she is absorbing more of the nutrients instead of pooping them all out. :) ??? Anyway they seem to be quite opposite of each other so far.
She got her hip brace on on Thursday and she absolutely hated it! She screamed and screamed! I have never seen her so mad about anything! Not even when she gets pretty hungry does she cry that bad! It just broke my heart and it was so hard for me to see her be so frustrated when she would try to move her legs and then she couldn't and then she would just be scarlet red with tears rolling down her face and I could barely calm her down. She had to be held most of that day, but she has now gotten used to it thank heavens! I was worried my happy baby would never be happy again! but she is back to her usual self and I am so glad she is such a calm baby or she may really have had trouble wearing this brace! I will give you more of my feeling about the hip brace on a future post. But for now that is about all I can think of about our sweet little Brooky! We sure have enjoyed having her in our home!

Oh and one more thing I wanted to write down before I forget...this one is about Isaiah. The other day about a week ago or so I was trying to get a lot done and probably wasn't giving Isaiah the attention he needed. SO he was starting to do things to get my attention...like make more messes and things and I was getting a little frustrated. I stopped to think for a minute and realized Zaya just needed a little love and attention too. So I sat down on the couch and told Isaiah that I loved him very much and gave him a big kiss and hug which he returned. I then told him that he was my special boy. Then he looked at me and said, "You are my special friend mom." I was expecting him to just mimic back exactly what I had said to him, since that is his favorite thing to do lately, but I was shocked when he changed it from boy to friend. It is times like these that having children is so worth  it! I just love the sweet things they do and say!

I love these cute little chubby arms!

Three weeks old

1 month old

So sweet and peaceful

My little chunk!

This is the skullet hair I was talking about. :)

She loves baths.

Double chin.

Sweet little smile

Picture is kinda dark but it is a funny face. 

6 weeks old

Sleeping peaceful.
You can sort of see how her legs are not together anymore. It makes it a little hard to swaddle her and feed her and cuddle her with the brace on. I will post pictures of the brace soon.

All ready for church today before I  put  her brace back on.

Not sure why this one is side ways. Oh well. :)

Idaho Family Reunion 2011

This year we held our 2nd reunion with just my siblings and their families. Our family is growing so quickly that there are enough of us now to hold our own special reunion and I can't imagine how many new spouses and grandkids there will be in the family in a few years from now! It was so fun to see everyone again that we hadn't seen in such a long time! This year Ben and Jamie were in charge and they reserved a cabin for us in Island Park where we spent a few days. Everyone showed up a day or two early in Rexburg at mom and dad's house and then Monday we all went up to the cabin and had fun having picnic lunches, boating on the lakes, fishing, and just having a good time relaxing and playing games together. The cousins also had lots of fun playing and getting into mischief! I wish I would have gotten more pictures but I dropped my camera in the water in the boat while we were out on the lake so it was out of commission for part of the trip. I am just relieved it didn't break! Here are some pictures that I did get though:

Mom, Dad, and Jacob

Hannah, Matthew, and Issac

Here they are again in another shot.

Beautiful scenery

Getting ready to go on a walk.

Grandma and Brooklyn

Everyone gathered together.

Preparing some of the swords and shields for the Armor of God  FHE for the kids.

Sarah (Coyote)

Isaac, Matthew, and Jenny

Zaya finally decided to join in with the warriors.

Isaac with Paul and his big fish.

Coyote and Tommy

Grandpa and Jacob

Mary holding Brooklyn

Lucy after eating in Grandpa's raspberry patch. :) Which all the grandkids enjoyed.

Cute Tommy

Jacob gobbling down his corn on the cob!

Isaiah after getting into my makeup once again! I can't believe how well he did putting on the mascara!

Notice the lipstick and cover-up on the cheeks

And the lipstick he drew everywhere and the mess he made!

Lucy enjoying an apple!

One of Lucy's several artistic expressions. She sure loved those markers. :)

Lucy and Zaya saying farewell.

Cute cousins

Zaya having fun riding the four wheeler  with grandma.

After we got home from the trip Zaya fell off of his chair at the table and somehow hit his eye. Luckily it wasn't any worse!

Our past 6 weeks!

Wow how time flies! It has been a really crazy but good past 6 weeks. I can't believe that Brooklyn is already 6 weeks old (yesterday). Since she has been born this is what we have been up to.... So after Brooklyn was born things were going very well with everything so we officially decided that we needed to move as soon as possible to California. Otherwise I would have been home by myself during the week while Casey commuted back and forth on the weekends from San Diego. I didn't want to try and cope with being by myself with a brand new baby and adjusting to having two kids on my own, so I thought the sooner we could move the better. I really didn't want t move but I knew the sooner the better and that it was what we were supposed to do. It was hard saying goodbye to friends and our new home and moving once again. Not to mention the fact that Brooklyn was only 2 weeks old when we arrived here in San Diego. So two days before we were to move I took Brooklyn in for her check up and the doctor found that her left hip was really loose and wanted to schedule us for a hip ultrasound to check for certain. We were unable to get in to the radiologist before we left, which was really frustrating. So the doctor said it would be fine if we waited until we got here to do it. So we moved into our apartment here in Vista, CA on the 11th of August and had tons of help from the ward here unloading the truck which was such a blessing. We were here a week and then we left to drive 15 hours all the way to Idaho for a family reunion that I refused to miss. :) I will do a separate post about that with lots of pictures. Once we returned from that I was able to take Brooklyn in on September 1st (since our new insurance took effect that day) and get her hips looked at again. The doctor here told me that her left hip was really loose. Instead of doing a scan he just wanted to get her in a hip brace right away. So right after that appointment I had to drive down to the other hospital location and get the brace put on. We still don't know exactly what we will have to do with her hips but she will have to be in the brace for months...not sure how many, and we know this is just the beginning step of fixing her hip. I will also post more about this later. Anyway we are finally back and life is starting to get back to normal again! It has been a crazy past few weeks and they have flown by so quickly. We are starting to adjust to our apartment here in Vista. I think the things that we are adjusting to the most are the weather, which is really nice, but humid, which is such a change from the dry desert heat! Also the crazy traffic and roads here. It is not nearly as easy to navigate as Vegas because there are many twisty roads that change names, lots of hills, and just weird little streets. But I  love all the beautiful plants and flowers here! Everything grows here and it is so fun seeing some of the plants I studied in school and exciting for me to try and figure out what half of the ones are that I have never seen before! We are also really excited about living only 10 minutes drive from the ocean and are excited to go explore and relax there as much as we can.